


Free From the Bondage You Are In

by brokenmemento



Series: What You Are To Me These Days [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Cannon Divergence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Season 1, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:27:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23521531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Sometimes when you are used to nothing good, you punish yourself and miss out. Yennefer of Vengerberg spends a lifetime chasing something to make her feel.
Relationships: Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: What You Are To Me These Days [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1808299
Comments: 39
Kudos: 190





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Quarantine life led me to this series and I found myself rooting for these two as the season progressed. I love some good angst as well as the enemies to friends to lovers trope, so I hopped on this train. Sadly, only to then be disappointed when I read spoilers about the literature and learned what ACTUALLY happens to these two. Ah, the joys of fanfiction, am I right? Anyway, please be gentle as this is my first foray into this fandom and I am playing with getting the characterization right.
> 
> Also, who doesn't like a good "hot for teacher" story? You've been there. You know it.

Yennefer does not know kind things. It’s not the type of life she’s ever led. So used to drifting through existence with not an eye on her, except to beat her down or spit upon her. Oh, how she longs for something to give her peace in a lifetime of chaos. 

She never expects the gray eyes to notice her, the air of dismissiveness and disgust, yes, but Yennefer is experienced enough with reading people to know that this small, severe woman is also intrigued by her too. It’s why she opens her mouth to defy her immediately, why she combats the very idea of heading off into the unknown with her. 

From her position in the dirt and shit, she’s got a lot of gumption to gamble against this woman whom she feels an electric energy surging off her. And for what it’s worth, Yennefer is equally intrigued even though her mouth is saying otherwise. 

The woman’s thin eyebrows move almost imperceptibly, judging of course. Her high cheekbones instill a regalness to face and her dress is cut perfectly to accentuate the dipping curves of her form-the the ample bosom and cinched waist. She’s the picture of poise and refinery and Yennefer dislikes her immediately. 

Women like this one think they can have the world simply because they command it. The fact that she’s a witch hammers home the belief. Yennefer is not for having, at least not mentally. Four marks from the woman to the pathetic excuse for her father say otherwise physically. 

It’s not what starts Yennefer’s anger, but it exacerbates it. She’s enraged when she looks in the mirror and slams her fist into it. Death seems a more fitting outcome than being locked away in a dimly lit room with even less hope than she arrived with. 

Her own tears seem less warm now that blood is oozing from the cut atop her hand. Then it loses its string when Yennefer feels that essence that is both nerve-racking and stifling.

“Do you know how many people wouldn’t blink if you died?” 

It’s the first thing the woman says to her and it’s devoid of any emotion. Careless, callous. A statement Yennefer already knows but it guts her just the same. It’s something she doesn’t need to be reminded of and resents hearing aloud. 

It’s only after she’s told to meet the strange woman in the greenroom that he mind grips purchase on a thought: How long had this Tissaia de Vries watched her sleep?

****************

Hours morph into days and Yennefer can’t get a hold on anything she’s supposed to. Rocks remain unlifted, flowers still in bloom. She lies because it makes her feel as if she isn’t in a free fall, as if she has some semblance of control. Tissaia, of course, points out that she does not at every turn. 

The rectoress’ words haunt her in her fitful sleep and she sees herself wilting and black like daisies on a stem. The continuum of what she’s said, about how sometimes a thing is simply ordinary and the best possible thing it can do is die, kicks her in the chest over and over again. She knows she’s more, feels it down to her bones. Tissaia is _wrong_. She will not wilt. She will not die. 

After the lightning incident, the woman has the gall to weave an even darker web in Yennefer’s heart. 

“There are mages like Sabrina who ignore emotions and mages like us who are consumed by them.”

Yennefer doesn’t miss the pronoun Tissaia uses, the fact that the marble-like creature in front of her acknowledges that she feels at all. There is a fine line between life and death and Yennefer has done all to invite it to her door. Tissaia unwinds the bindings at her wrists and runs a cool finger along the puckered gashes. Almost in awe of them, a pitch-black curiosity in her demeanor that Yennefer knows she would never admit aloud. 

“Do you have what it takes?” she asks. 

Her touch is such a counter to her voice, the features on her face. It’s soft and almost caring. To ignore this would be to look a gift horse in the mouth, to throw away a rare moment of seeing a fissure running along the countenance of the highest of them all. For the first time ever, Yennefer feels connected to the mentor. Determination surfaces, washes into her throat as she tells her yes. 

Tissaia even goes so far as to call her by her name and Yennefer feels seen for the first time in her life. She’s a person with feelings and ambitions. Her entire life, she’s been ignored for the way she looked and vilified because she could do nothing about it. Maybe this woman really does care deep down. Maybe…

But all that determination feels blasted to shit when she hears the knocks sounding down the hall. How they skip over her own wooden door. How she’s overlooked. She lies in bed and is distraught as she stares up toward the ceiling of the castle with tears in her eyes. 

Everything feels on fire, like she’s being consumed from the inside because of indignation. Taissia is a fool to disregard her, but Yennefer realizes she is one too to think the Rectoress would ever give her a chance when she’s done little more than create a portal and weasel some information out of an even thicker mage.

Yennefer leaves her room with her blood in a boil. The conclave of pupils waiting while she lurks on the fringes irks her even more. Not a one of them with any more hope to become a great sorceress than herself, even less so. Outside, thunder sounds and permeates the rock sending it vibrating under her wet palms.

Eels twitch below their feet, shells of the women who stood proudly on this rock hoping to ascend when they’re left to be writhing masses metres down. Yennefer sends them on their way, turning to see a genuine smile on Tissaia’s face. She can’t help but feel a pang of pride shoot sharp in her chest.

When Tissaia leaves, Yennefer strains to hear the barely audible words, almost thinks she imagines them. _You may prove useful yet, Yennefer of Vengerberg._

She aims to prove those words true. 

**********************

He’s right, Yennefer admits. She is a first draft and a rather poor one at that. Even though there’s a future standing in front of her, she’s having a hard time envisioning it. What good is a beautiful dress if she can’t see past her deformities, can barely fathom a life where they don’t come into play?

It’s this thought she’s lost in when the air seems to bleed from the room. Her heels click across the marble floor and her milky shadowed figure comes into view from behind, her reflection in the mirror hiding the affection in her blue-gray eyes.

Soon, she’s at Yennefer's shoulder and speaking confusing but beautiful words too-of a tomorrow where she is no longer who she is. Tissaia probes her, asks her to pontificate on what her new self may encompass when she rises from the ashes of her former shell. She layers questions while she asks Yennefer for a darkened world and life inside her mind.

The thing Yennefer doesn’t say is that she hasn’t spent a lot of time on dreaming because, with her, she’s been no fairy tale. She’s been lower than slop to the hogs her family raised, more unimportant than a cloud of dirt people kick with their boots. 

So Yennefer says yes, she sees her newness while getting stuck in another tickling thought. Who was Tissaia de Vries before she was chiseled out by a new maker? Did she feel the gamut of emotions? Did she, like Yennefer, look in the glass and hate all that she could see? Has she come to her place in life because she’s often felt guilty of sterilizing herself and feels bereft about losing motherhood? Is that why Yennefer and her classmates have become surrogates latching on to a teet that no longer bears sustenance to retain anyone?

She feels infinitely sad despite the coming events. Tissaia touches her hair softly and sends emotion swimming like squiggling eels in the grotto deep inside herself. She melts further when she hears the word “stunning” and feels the rectoresses touch descend to her lower back. 

_It’s dangerous to make me feel like this_ , Yennefer thinks. Stares out at her reflection with violet eyes. 

******************

It’s the worst pain she’s felt in her entire fucking life. The second the ripples course through her body, she regrets not allowing for this to occur drug under. However, it’s too late and her body shifts and cracks under the magic. 

Her bones break and her body contorts and why, why is there so much agony? Delirium sets in amid the pain and the movie reel of her plays before her eyes. This physical pain is a momentary diversion, only it feels like it will go on for years. There will be an end to it, unlike her casting off to Nilfgaard or the immense aching that she’s done ever since the red dress was thrown in her direction and she learned of her fate. 

She thinks of Tissaia, of the only person who she had trusted enough to let it cripple her. _Now who has been thick?_ _,_ she thinks and cries out in agony. She has pushed and defied her, sure, but she’s also stopped to listen, to learn, to bottle the flaring chaos deep inside her soul. How easy was it to sell her out like this? To not be pushed and shoved to a corner but to go into it willingly.

Her predicament may be Istredd’s immediate fault, but she blames the rectoress for folding her cards at the will of men. Of letting fucking Stregebor have his way and returning to sit high and mighty in her office instead of having the gumption to share the news with the one person it affected the most. 

When the haze and daze of her remaking begins to fade, she scrapes her bloody fingernails along the stones below her palms. She rises on wobbling appendages and glares with her indigo eyes. 

“I have a party to attend,” she grounds out and manages to stand. 

Before she even walks through the doors, she feels Tissaia. When the begin to swing open, the full force of the woman hits her in the chest, an onslaught, and Yennefer does everything in her power to cloak herself away from that particular watchful eye. Instead, she steels her face and never breaks eye contact with her as she walks across the room to turn her attention to Aedirn’s great king, Fringilla looking stricken by his side. 

She weasels her way out of Nilfgaard’s clutches, secures her own passage exactly where she deserves. Where she belongs. 

Tissaia is a vision in her maroon garment, hair less severe atop her head and moments before, a smile curling her lips. Yennefer notices. Yennefer has seen it all. On any other night where she hadn’t put stock in their leader, she might be enchanted by her. She might have wandered up to her after a dance with the king and whispered a loaded thank you. She might have grabbed her hand and led her away from the lights and eyes and pressed their bodies together in a desperate attempt to attain another fleeting moment of attention from the maddening woman she’s never quite figured out. 

  
When King Virfuril leads her out of the chamber, she works to turn her heart to rock. She doesn’t even cast a look back at Tissaia de Vries. It will be the last time, she vows, that she will ever set foot in Aretuza. It will be the last time she sees _her_ for decades.


	2. Two

The years pass and the excitement and grandeur of being in Aedirn’s court never come. It’s the equivalent of wiping snotty noses on terrible children. The King and Queen are loathsome, so spoiled and fatalistic that they’re always trying to one-up the other. He sleeps with a whore, she spends his weight in gold. They fight, they make up. He fucks children into her body hoping for an heir, she broods like a toddler who has gotten the wrong toy when the girls inevitably come. 

It’s a neverending cycle of madness, like watching someone strung high from a rope and kicking but never quite doing enough to end it all. Yennefer watches it all with a raised eyebrow in rare moments and utter boredom the next. Her talents, her strength, her cunning is wasted on the lot of them. 

A niggling voice in the back of her head repeats ad nauseam:  _ you wanted this. _ When it starts, it sounds an awful lot like one she’s heard before. The words are clipped and the tone is borderline dismissive. If she spent longer than two seconds analyzing that for what it is, it might change the direction of her life. Instead, she drowns the noise with wine or ale or invites someone between her legs so that there are other sounds to focus on instead of the one that burrows into her head like an animal. 

Different landscapes come and go. She does a little magic and causes an awful lot of chaos. Whatever she leaves behind seems off the hinges irrevocably. And while boredom might cause some of it, Yennefer wonders if she’s well beyond any type of saving. 

She also doesn’t expect to feel so damn  _ alone _ . The people who brought her into the world can barely be called parents. While her carrier did try to put up somewhat of a fight, that filthy excuse of a man did nothing but beat her down and berate her. 

When she thinks of him, she could raze the room, burn it all to the ground. He sold her off into a bound life, a piglet traipsing behind the sow, hoping for scraps or meager pairings. Wishing for something deeper, even remotely abstract enough to resemble the thing that everyone talks about. 

Love.

Yennefer scoffs and looks over at the young woman who is doomed, a female babe in her arms. They can carry on like normal, all well and good, but Yennefer knows it’s only a matter of time before their heads are on a stake. 

When the spearhead slashes through the cab of the carriage, the screams piercing the air, it’s obvious what has come. The only surprising aspect of it is that it is sooner than expected. Yennefer has half a mind to exit the carriage, throw her hands up, and give the king his way. If he’s so desperate to feel different heat against his loins, who is she to stop him?

She peeks out and blood sprays into her eyes. All around, severed limbs and red trails of spray litter the snow white ground. Glancing to the left, she sees the assassin and its creature, waiting and ready to pounce. This is no job for just the Queen, Yennefer realizes rather quickly. Her own life is on the line too. 

Muttering a swear, she spins around and says the only thing she knows how. 

“Run!” she screams and feels more anger rise at the fact that this stupid fucking king, the one she screwed Fringilla out of being assigned to, is after her head as well. 

The portal whirrs into existence. As she enters with her entourage, she hopes that Aedirn burns to the fucking ground. 

************************

The incident severs any loyalty she had with Aedirn to begin with. It was easy to portal back to the front steps of the castle, bodyguards flustered to see her arrival. With a menacing smile, she’d flicked a wrist and crushed the vertebrae in their spinal columns, making them crumple like straw dolls on the ground. 

Throwing open the doors, she’d breezed easily into Virfuril’s exasperated and scared visage awaiting her on the other side of the doors to his study. 

“Yennefer, what is the…” he had stammered and backed away, knocking over a table and sending his refreshment tray clanging to the ground and wine seeping along the floor. 

“You don’t get to talk,” Yennefer growled, murmuring a spell in Elder that sent him flying into the stone wall with invisible restraints. “My life was threatened, by one of your ilk, no doubt. Who else would want to wipe me away along with his no-good-for-producing-an-heir wife? The whole thing reeks of you. Why, it’s practically clinging to every part of you.”

“I can explain…” 

“You can’t and you won’t. But I feel that it is very fortuitous that it did occur since I was more than over being at your every beck and call. This gives me good excuse to leave this shite hole of a place and hope that Aedirn never requests another mage again,” Yennefer sneered. 

Turning on a heel, she’d begun to click her heels along the floor. She had had every intention of making it to the door and out of the kingdom for good, leaving Virfuril to sag to the ground once she was too far away from him for her magic to reach. Instead, he had managed to halt her steps. 

“I’ll reach out to Aretuza, to the Brotherhood. I’m sure Tissaia de Vries will have no trouble sending another, more qualified mage to replace the defective one that wormed their way into my kingdom!” he threatened. 

A gasp of air sounded behind her and when she turned around, she’d had little remembrance of speaking magics that would tighten around his throat. His state has caused quite a sense of contentment to rise in her chest. 

“We both know you will do no such a thing. Tissaia de Vries is an aging relic in a house of phantoms and ghosts. You’re lucky she saw fit to allow me to follow you. Can you imagine the destruction I could be causing in Nilfgaard? Yet here I am, cleaning up your messes for decades and listening to your pathetic quest for fulfillment,” Yennefer laughed. “Plus I’m fairly certain you are in no shape to send omens my way. Especially since I could twist your head 360 degrees with a wave of my hand.”

“You wouldn’t,” he croaked. 

“A few of your finest bodyguards might seek to differ with you,” Yennefer shrugged. Really, it had been of no consequence to her what he chose. 

When he remained silent, she had smiled deviously and clasped her hands together in triumph. 

“Oh, good. I was rather hoping we could have an amicable solution. If you  _ ever _ threaten me or speak Tissaia de Vries name again, I will know it and swiftly come to end the life you shall continue living,” Yennefer said and spun to leave. 

The doors of the study opened and she let forth another wicked grin. Rinde was calling. She saw fit to answer it. 

***********************

Rinde is not infinitely better than being in the court of Aedirn but the people trust in magic and are stupid, so Yennefer finds her pockets full of coin and her boredom satiated for a while. Even when the mayor takes her cuffed to his chambers, a rogue thrill pulses. 

That is until one sentence sends a different jolt to her chest. 

“You like to inflict pain. We get it.”

No, she doesn’t  _ get _ it and never has. Yennefer would hazard to bet that Tissaia led a rather charmed life before the one she ended up with. She thrums with the air of nobility, of importance, and always has. Her face may have changed and the other parts of her body, but underneath, she’s the same wound-too-tight person she always has been. 

It’s beyond frustrating to deal with someone who gives so little away, who shields their emotions at every turn when Yennefer has no trouble letting forth whatever she may feel. A mystery, she is not. Rather yet, more befitting an open book for all to read. So whatever thinly veiled reference Tissaia may or may not be making about the punishment Yennefer creates and belabors under is of no concern to her. Neither is a dead king or Fringilla. 

Yennefer eyes Tissaia warily as she walks away, runs a small hand along the canopy of the bed. Talks about Yennefer being hidden. It’s maddening when she sits in the spot that Yennefer sleeps, lounges, fucks. It’s a dark thought coming to life, what she would like in Yennefer’s bed. Much softer the men she’s invited in. More delicate too than the small sampling of women. 

She acts like it matters not, puts on a sense of nonchalance and mostly dismisses the conversation at hand. Her body is of no consequence to Tissaia, what she wants to do with it. When the woman’s voice finally loses its proper tone and comes out in an exasperated puff, Yennefer has little time to revel in the fact because Tissaia is touching her now, holding firmly to her shoulders like it’s an act they share all the time. 

She’s been more of a mother than Yennefer’s ever had really, but their relationship also transects into other facets too. The antagonism and allegiance, the student to teacher to equal is a neck-breaking jaunt that’s never able to be sorted out. The very life flowing in Yennefer’s veins might not have been created by Tissaia but has been protected by her and how can she stand before her and not understand the depth of wanting something so bad you’ll never have?

_ Return to Aretuza _ , Tissaia says,  _ shape a new generation.  _

There can be no homes made in places when you’ve never belonged anywhere-Not in physical locations or in people’s hearts. Yennefer knows this, wonders why Tissaia doesn’t, why the woman wanders the continent searching for broken things to break even further before allowing them to be glued back together. Too much time might be stacked between their hearts now, but they’re cut from the same cloth really.

“How did we get this way. I gave you all I could give,” Tissaia says, barely above a whisper.

When Yennefer tells Tissaia that she wants everything, she mostly means it. She doesn’t pause too long after the words to think about how everything would include the woman in front of her as well. Before Yennefer can catch the thought of the rectoress in her bed again, she shoos it away, a butterfly dodging the net. 

Dismissing her is easier than keeping her in the same room. When she finally portals out, Yennefer decides to breathe.

***************************

Geralt is a nice distraction from the destructive relationships she’s encountered her entire life. He proves a worthy adversary and is combative, verbally and wittily sharp. Physically, he poses a striking form too so when they clash against one another, it almost feels right. That is, until it doesn’t. 

Emotions make a person weak and Yennefer supposes that is why the Witcher exits cleanly after the golden dragon incident and why she walks away feeling like daggers have been driven into her heart. 

She hadn’t fallen for him, no, but he had all the makings of being something solid underneath the ever-shifting ground. Humans are horribly disappointing so a mutant turning out just the same shouldn’t be life-altering in any way. 

So too can mages. 

Nazair is dusty and full of idiots, Istredd possibly the biggest of them all. Still, Yennefer figures that with Geralt still fresh out of her, an adequate diversion might be pairing up with someone from her past. The fuck had been good despite how she was before, so the wonders she could do for him now.

She’s barely past the dying taste of him on her lips when the man sits quickly in front of her and eyes her steadily. She tells him to piss off and asks who the fuck he is, but she already knows. The energy around him, the controlled chaos tightly coiled inside him identifies him before his mouth ever does. 

Yennefer doesn’t give a shit about anything or anywhere he’s talking about until suddenly, he mentions himself in the same breath as Tissaia. Her attention that had barely been hanging on by a thread is riveted back in. Yennefer tries not to let her face betray the quell of emotion trying to stir. How long has it been?

“Tissaia asked for me?” she questions. 

“She said you’re the best student she ever taught,” the mage answers back. 

She tries to fight the smile forming on her lips but she knows they quirk at his words. They slush around in her eyes before heading down and warming her everywhere. She’s had years to move past her, to not twitch at the mention of her name. But her face remains powerful inside of Yennefer’s mind, the cadence of her voice, the harsh blue of her eyes. 

Yennefer has always been good at pushing back, at running away from her to hide, yet it’s only ever for a little while. Days, months, or years, she will return back to the woman who made her rise from dirt and shit, who locked her away and taught her roughly, always handling her with the skill of an undertaker. 

If she’d never said the things she said, did the things she did, would Yennefer have turned out the same way? If she’d been kind, wiped tears when Yennefer cried herself to sleep or folded to every whim, would the power coursing through Yennefer’s veins be as strong? She’s who she is because of the split, the line of being who she is despite and with the help of Tissaia. 

No one need know that’s why she finds herself walking the halls of Aretuza again. She’s angry and her hands stay balled into fists as the smells and sounds and sights slam into her again. Her eyes shift at every passing body, both wanting Tissaia to be the next one and not. 

It takes getting a bit sidetracked for her to appear. She looks a little older but still hauntingly beautiful. Her red dress molds around her, body a little smaller than the last time they spoke. 

When she says, “You’ve ruined one life. Stop there,” it should be obvious what she means. 

Yennefer has a hard time discerning whether she’s talking about her or herself though. Tissaia leaves, climbing the eyes out of the hollow. Yennefer knows this is a tipping point, that if she follows, she’ll likely forsake any freedom left she has. 

It takes all of a few seconds before her heels click on the stones, sound ascending to the sky. 


	3. Three

Of course, Yennefer would get dragged into some shit. She practically lived in it during her old life. Why would her life as a mage prove any different?

A fucking war is brewing and Yennefer feels incredibly tired. She’s been waging against _something_ her entire life. From the second she entered the world with a curved spine, she had to learn to fight, to be seen. 

Even in Aretuza, the theme didn’t change though. It’s why she’s never wanted to return. Every hallway holds heartache, every room, shame. There’s not a place on the premise her feet have fallen that she doesn’t have some immense grief and hatred attached to it. Yet all that pales as she follows along behind the person it feels like she’s been chasing almost her entire life. 

“I never wanted to come back here,” she says, a petulant pout tinging her speech. It’s so very difficult to say a thing that is both a truth and a lie at the same time. 

Aretuza means nothing, but the woman who’s trail she’s following holds greater value than she’s ever ascribed to her. She’d meet with her wherever she wanted on the continent if only Tissaia would move past her pride and speak it so. 

“And you’ve failed at that too.”

Yennefer is not naive enough to know her life has a considerable amount of botches. There’s a lot of blood on her hands, but she’s never let any of that stop her. Tissaia is a fool if she thinks that will now. She’s got a building full of senseless girls hinging their futures on being mages that join royal courts. With piss all for talent, Tissaia is more likely to live forever than have one of the snots under her amount to more than the four marks she paid for Yennefer. 

Just when they might have a moment, the two of them, other mages pile in. While she’s glad to see Triss, she finds herself galled that she’s once again hanging on Tissaia’s skirt tails as the world seems poised to fall apart. 

Her blood feels like liquid fire in her veins when Fringilla walks through the door, her nails pressing half-moons into her palms when the other sorceress has the audacity to attribute the current situation with Yennefer herself. 

Out of everyone in the room, Yennefer can understand the best about wanting to go one’s own direction and carving a new path. But Fringilla is quite mad in the head if she thinks Yennefer can’t smell the heaping amount of shit she piles on when she states that Nilfgaard’s only conflict is with Cintra. 

Leave it to Tissaia to give an emboldened, double meaning speech to a whole room about country and woman. Ever a metaphor for the two of them, Yennefer listens and wants to grab Tissaia and portal them away, trace her fingers along her throat and whisper truths into her mouth. It’s almost like an apology, one she’s likely to never receive again. 

Stealing glances in Tissaia’s direction feels dangerous but she does it anyway. Their eyes meet on several occasions and her heart is doing little to stay inside of her chest. When the vote falls through, Tissaia’s rallying call falling on deaf ears, it becomes even worse. 

Yennefer stalks out of the room, throwing the door open in haste. She’s unbearably angry about how everything in this place works, how seemingly blind a whole room of mages can be when they’ve been gifted with a sight, can read minds. 

Tissaia is close on her heels now, an odd turn of events. Yennefer sets her jaw and grits her teeth which she supposes is why the rectoress launches into a surprising display of truth and emotion. 

“You were right, in Rinde. Aretuza is all I have,” she whispers with a hint of agony in her words. As much agony as she can summon forth without completely losing control. 

Then she’s saying things like _do it for me_ and _please_ and her eyes are a bit watery and pleading and _fuck_ , why can’t Yennefer just say ‘blast it all’ and leave this woman behind for good? What unshakeable hold, what death grip does she have on her? (has always had)

She’d once compared Yennefer to herself, many moons ago, and said they felt emotion in the same way because they were alike. Yennefer has always scoffed at the notion, but it’s becoming more clear that there are boundaries to them that the other is threatening every day. While Yennefer might be chaos walking, Tissaia thrums and thrives on excising perfect control. When she loses it, it’s hard to get back. 

There’s always a dueling countenance in them, a thing threatening to fall out into the open. Yennefer threatens her, pushes back against her the best she can and _still_ , this woman manages to show up at odd moments in her life. Like there is a tether holding fast between the two of them and nothing can ever fully disconnect them from the other. 

It’s why she finds herself crammed shoulder to shoulder with other mages in a boat. Why she glares at the back of Tissaia’s head but would say yes to her a thousand times over again. There’s little in Yennefer to deny her now. She might say it but actions speak louder than words and she’s hauling herself over rocks on the beach and having Vilgefortz question her motives, which causes her to stalk off without a word.

It’s why she feels a stirring of the dangerous thing that’s been there for as long as she can remember as she walks by Triss, hears her question if Vilgefortz is their new daddy. She wants to retort that Tissaia was never her mother but the thought sticks a little hard.

Maybe that is what Tissaia has been trying for all along, some bastardization of a motherly bond between herself and the girls under her directive. Maybe Yennefer has misread the cues, put too much stock in her own misguided emotions where the other woman is concerned. Maybe there is nothing but the maternal on Tissaia’s end and Yennefer feels resigned to something bigger than herself. Like there isn’t much worth fighting for if she isn’t fighting against (for) Tissaia anymore.

Geralt is another wound she doesn’t feel like picking at and even though she’d rather be anywhere else, Tissaia is holding a cup of ale and Yennefer thinks drinking herself into oblivion doesn’t sound half bad. If only she didn’t have to fight a war when the sun rises.

Yennefer is fine with dying whenever, but Tissaia seems uncharacteristically introspective, speaking in riddles about living for the night. Yennefer drags her gaze over to the young mage who previously held Tissaia’s attention, contempt rising a little in her belly. She keeps that quiet though and tries to smile even though he reminds Yennefer of a preening peacock.

A laugh erupts from Tissaia then, a genuine smile that Yennefer has so rarely seen. Whatever hole she’s in regarding this woman, she falls even deeper. The conversation falls much like herself.

“So are you ready? To die,” she asks. 

“Yes,” Yennefer answers after a beat. “I’ve lived two or three lifetimes already.”

“But you haven’t been satisfied in any of them,” Tissaia says, almost wistfully. Regretfully. As if Yennerfer’s happiness is tied to her too.

The next words she says are planned carefully, laden with the truth. She has no connection to the world, nothing to leave behind. She’s done nothing much of import for the people of this continent to speak her name for the years to come. It’s not how she ever imagined living, but neither was her life in the pigpens either. If this is all, if this is the sum total of her life, she supposes it is time for it to close. This life, it seems, has no more to give.

She hears Tissaia scoff beside her, turns her head in an attempt to grab Yennefer’s attention. She starting at Yennefer, gaze falling upon every part of her face. “You still have so much left to give.” Her voice quivers as she says it.

Yennefer feels its impact into her chest, looks sideways to the woman beside her. They hold each other’s eyes for a few breathless seconds and then Tissaia rises from beside her. Yennefer watches her walk away.

Something in her tugs and pulls, the uncategorical thing that never quite goes away. Tissaia’s hut lies beyond the courtyard. Yennefer stands and makes her way to it.

She bursts through the door with nothing in the way of greeting, doesn’t pay attention to the state of Tissaia’s undress, no longer wearing her heavy purple dress, it being discarded on a chair close by. If Yennefer wasn’t already worked up from Tissaia’s words, she might be by the sight of her in nothing but a simple cotton chemise. 

“Do come right on in,” Tissaia says drolly.

“You’re right,” Yennefer walks around the room slowly, not really looking at Tissaia and instead, everything else. “About me.”

When she doesn’t say anything, Yennefer waves a hand and continues. “I’ve lived several lives over but it seems my first one has always chased me, made me who I am in my…” _heart_. She doesn’t say it. 

“Yennefer…” Tissaia’s voice comes out softly, the softest Yennefer’s possibly ever heard it. 

She absolutely can’t let her go on, not with that tone that pegs her square in the chest, so she cuts her off and tries to get the words out. Before she dies, someone needs to know. 

“You asked me in Rinde why I wanted a baby,” Yennefer starts again. “My first life was unkind and a babe in my arms was never a thing I could imagine. With the way I looked, the curve of my spine, it mattered not that my female organs worked properly. No one would lay with something like me in fear that a new life would come into the world with the same defect.

“But then you found me. Gave me new direction. Eventually, my looks mattered not because I was perfect on the outside, but now I was damaged on the inside. My entire life, the two parts have always been at war, never at peace. As I held the girl of Aedirn, I liked the idea of caring for something more than myself. Of trying to get right what my creators did not.”

By this point, Tissaia has come closer, both of them standing in front of the bed. The look in her eyes is almost enough to send Yennefer undone. The unspoken possibility of tonight being their last night on earth hangs heavy, permeates the air all around. It’s sadness and guilt and another intangible thing Yennefer doesn’t want to speak on. 

“Is that why you have always taken Aretuza much too seriously?” Yennefer asks and turns, batting a rogue tear away. “To try to have some semblance of what is taken from us in order to live this incredibly lonely life?”

She’s spun around then, deadweight almost as Tissaia holds her up. Tears fall from her eyes and she feels weak, pitiful. Tissaia’s hands are caressing her cheek and running through her hair as she brings their foreheads together and speaks words against her mouth.

“You silly girl. Aretuza isn’t what mattered. It’s you. It’s always been you,” Tissaia says. 

Yennefer knows that the “you” isn’t specifically for her. It’s meant for all the girls whom Tissaia has had a hand in raising with a cool countenance and firm hand. Still, it’s more than Yennefer has had her entire life, more steady and a constant than anyone else. 

She knows she should say something, say some of the things keeping the weight pressed into her body. Instead, she lets her own hands grip Tissaia’s face too, running her fingers along the smooth skin. Feeling her like this, it’s hard to believe she’s over a decade older. (before she stopped aging at all). 

Yennefer is not dense to the fact that tomorrow is probably her last day alive, if she ever even sees its end. 

“You’re right,” Yennefer repeats, not at all in answer to the things that Tissaia has said. More of an agreement to her earlier words. “I’ve not been happy in any of my lives. I’ve been chasing. I’m so very tired.” 

That’s when she kisses her.

Yennefer can tell Tissaia is surprised by the way her body jerks. And really, Yennefer has given very little indication that she views her in the romantic sense, much less even likes her. Their lips stay pressed together, but Yennefer doesn’t move because she’s waiting for Tissaia to pull away. She doesn’t and that sends Yennefer backward.

They’re still close, still inhaling and exhaling the same air. Tissaia’s eyes are dark, but no reprimand comes from her mouth. She doesn’t let on what she thought of the kiss so Yennefer chances trying again, this time with a little more force. Starting with her left hand on the back of Tissaia’s neck, she skims the right along the curve of her cheek with a thumb going to the maroon of her lips. The second the digit touches her there, Yennefer joins them again. 

Yennefer would go slack-jawed if having her mouth on Tissaia wasn’t more amazing than the shock of her actually kissing back. It’s not frenzied like she wants, but she knows enough to not try to push any more than what she is. 

If this is her last night alive, this is a fine way to spend it she supposes: the rectoress filling her every sense.

*******************

She burns it all to the fucking ground. Sodden Hill is basically no more and Nilfgaard’s soldiers are crackling with smolder at every turn. Of course, Fringilla is nowhere in the crisping corpses. That would be too much to hope for.

Before she had charred the earth, she’d reached out and felt where Tissaia was, encompassing her in a cocoon as fire tore through everything. Her fingers had spilled forth years of torment, of anguish, of inadequacy, of loneliness. 

They say there are casualties to war, but Yennefer had aimed to not take the one she cared most about out of it by her own hand. The idea of Tissaia dying on the battlefield was the worst idea to bear, so much more real with dimeritium thickening in her lungs and blood. 

It will only get worse before it has any chance of getting better and is more than likely to be what sends the woman to her grave. This aches to think. To not see her sitting behind a desk with a book in her hand, to not hear her steady clip as she breezes down halls. The souls she’ll never meet and mold, the ones who will never experience the bruising hard love of a woman who’s heart is bigger than she’s ever let on. 

“Sometimes a flower is just a flower, Yennefer, and the best thing it can do for us is die,” she hears the words whisper in her mind. 

“No,” Yennefer shakes her head resolutely. “I will not let you, Tissaia!” Maybe she screams and maybe everything burns on and in her too. 

The grit covering Tissaia’s clothes is testament to her utter stupidity at trying to turn Fringilla. Yennefer had seen it in the great room at Aretuza, how the sorceress had changed and was performing way darker magic than simply freezing cats. 

She’d looked wrong, felt wrong, and Yennefer had instantly wanted to portal her and Tissaia away but with a room full of idiots, save for a few, that had been nigh impossible. She could spend her night beating her already bruised and broken body up over the what-ifs and should-haves. None of it would change the current, that Yennefer swoons from exertion and hits the ground. 

Above, the sky is cloudless and filled with stars but the only thing Yennefer sees is the darkened blue of Tissaia’s eyes, the feel of her and she folds to lay her head beside Yennefer on the ground. 

Things begin to spin and she tries to gain purchase on the woman beside her only to be pulled away by bended fingertips, a raw cry flung from her throat as she is hoisted in the air. 

She sees the yellow eyes and the furrowed brow, the white flurry of hair and his chiseled chin. He speaks words but Yennefer hears them not. She gives the last of her energy to fight helplessly against him as he carries her away from the unmoving body of Tissaia. 

************************

She awakens sometime later to the noise of a young girl filling a basin with water nearby. Disoriented, panic floods her body and when she tries to sit up too fast, her vision swims. A pair of firm hands push at her shoulders and a voice speaks in a soothing cadence. 

“Let me go,” Yennefer groans and fights not to be sick. 

“You’re in medical,” the girl tries again. 

“Yeah, no shit,” Yennefer spits out and rubs her temples in an attempt to make the world realign. “Tissaia de Vries. Where is she?” 

“I’m sorry, I don’t…”

“I asked where the fuck she is and I demand you tell me right…” 

Yennefer never gets to finish the ire-filled sentence because something else cuts through the din.

“Calm down, Piglet.”

Yennefer’s heart eases a little as she opens her eyes. On the other side of the tent lies Tissaia, cheeks sallow and light drained from her eyes. Yennefer forgets the old name as soon as it’s spoken. 

“Why can’t I feel you?” she strains to detect Tissaia’s magic again, picks up nothing. 

“It seems that Fringilla has sought to make me regret ever proposing her coming back to Aretuza. And here I thought you would be the one to handle it poorly,” Tissaia says weakly. 

That’s when Yennefer remembers. The battlefield, the slaughter of her brothers and sisters, finding Tissaia stumbling from the woods with blood trickling from her nose and limbs heavy. The reason Yennefer can’t feel her is because she’s ingested an untold amount of dimeritium. Possibly enough to even take her life. 

“What’s the treatment plan?” Yennefer sniffs roughly. 

“Yennefer…”

“I said, what’s the damn _plan_ , Tissaia?” Yennefer yells. Even though she’s just incinerated an area of five square miles, the tables and beds shake. A last push of the magic she has left. 

The young girl attending the otherwise empty tent, save for the two of them, looks afraid. Yennefer sighs heavily and punches the straw pillow underneath her head. 

“Leave us,” Tissaia commands and the girl beelines it for the flap. 

Then it’s just the two of them, alone together and silence stuck in their throats. A fire crackles nearby, voices can be heard outside, but Yennefer can focus on nothing but the pain radiating throughout her entire body, some of it her own, some of it because of the women across the room. 

“I know what you’re going to say, so don’t even bother,” Yennefer huffs when Tissaia moves to speak. 

“You’re no fool, Yennefer. Do not suffer like one or ask me to do the same,” Tissaia says. 

“So you’ve given up, is that it? Let Fringilla fill you with a face full of poison and not ask questions about how to leech it from your body.”

“There are remedies, yes, but the odds are not good. Many a mage has lost their life to this.”

“Don’t speak numbers to me,” Yennefer waves off. “It’s fine to be scared but not to not fight just because the battle is uphill.”

Tissaia tries to sit up, grips her own abdomen and doubles over in pain. Yennefer is slow to her feet but crosses the room as best she can, laying a hand on the woman’s back as she groans. 

“I’m dying,” Tissaia whispers after the spell subsides, looks up into Yennefer’s eyes with regret.

“I didn’t scorch a whole forest and wake up only for you to not,” Yennefer tries, chances a touch at Tissaia’s elbow. “I’m not a healer. I could barely make it out of the greenhouse without being frustrated to no end, but we will beat this. Teach me how to save you.”

“It’s a lesson that might yield no reward,” Tissaia warns. 

“It’s better than not trying at all,” Yennefer tries to shrug with nonchalance but fails. The part of her that fights the world to not care is cracked and crumbling. She finds herself leaning over to rest her head on Tissaia’s arm, to listen to her labored breaths. 

A hand finally comes to touch too, to hold them both against the other.

A few days pass and Yennefer does her best to heal, but then experiences her own tribulation. An infection takes hold of her body. Just when it seemed the potions Tissaia has been given are turning her for the better, aided by Yennefer’s watchful eye, Yennefer is the one on the ground again. 

She’s not sure how long she’s out when she wakes up with scratchy sheets around her bottom half and a wool bandage binding her side and chest. She fingers the downy material before a hand lifts her exploring digits away and tucks it into her side.

“I’ve just put a salve on and given you a clean wrapping. Do try not to undo my work,” Tissaia chastises. Yennefer closes her eyes and lets a smile tug her lips. 

“You’re here,” she says. The world is still all right. 

“By no small feat. The elixirs cause the dimeritium to leave my body in many a liquified way,” Tissaia sighs tiredly. 

“I know I should be disgusted by that little fact but I’m just incredibly relieved you’re alive.”

Yennefer sits up, absent-minded of her wound or the exhaustion creeping in her limbs. When she looks down, she is reminded by her state of undress. The thought of Tissaia’s eyes on her body, of touching her, sends a jolt that powers everything lying dormant. The sheet slips a little, revealing a bit of purple bruised hip, but just as she’s about to cover herself, she sees Tissaia’s rogue eye looking at the spot. 

“Should I be embarrassed to wake up and find you’ve already gotten me naked without my knowing?” Yennefer jokes. 

“Oh, come on…”

“I could always move it completely away,” Yennefer suggests in a sultry voice. She leans in to capture Tissaia’s lips, eager to feel them again after experiencing such several nights hence. Oh, to repeat such a beautiful thing is almost too much for Yennefer to bear. 

A hand stops her from leaning into her, pushes back with ease. Yennefer opens her eyes to find Tissaia’s grip upon her shoulder. Not exactly where she would like it most.

“Why does it seem that things have inexorably changed between us?” Tissaia says softly, almost regretfully. Heart wrenchingly sad.

“Would that be such a bad thing?” Yennefer sniffs grumpily, not above answering a question with another. When Tissaia says nothing, only fidgets with her hands now in her lap and her head down, Yennefer finds it in herself to continue. “Why must you always seek to make me feel like a failure even when I’ve won?”

She doesn’t mean to let the query slip, but it comes out anyway. Tissaia looks startled by the words and a confused look crosses her face followed by her eyebrows knitting together. 

“Why would you think that?” she asks with a shake of her head. 

“Because that’s what I’ve always been to you, am I right? Little bottle of disorder, always causing trouble. Told to do this but instead mucks it up because it isn’t the way Tissaia would have done it. It’s not how she taught us to do it,” Yennefer spits rather callously. 

“It is I who have failed, Yennefer, not you,” she answers back in an equally frustrated tone. 

“What?” Yennefer watches her stand and put her hands on her stomach, gripping it as if to hold it all in. It doesn’t work. 

“You say I think you a failure, but that is most certainly not the case. I am,” she repeats then clarifies. “I was tasked with finding you, teaching you the ways of Aretuza. At no point was I supposed to get attached or do anything to risk getting close to any of you. But I failed, Yennefer. No matter what you did or what havoc you’ve caused, I couldn’t completely give up on you. I followed your journey as best I could. Always tried to.”

She comes to sit down in the chair near the bed again, puts her hands on Yennefer’s covered knees. Everything feels incredibly hot and Yennefer’s side is still very tender. She’s spent days not moving from her bed, but now she wants to do nothing more than move inside her bed with Tissaia against her. Even though they’re both of no condition to do so, Yennefer feels Tissaia’s words like a confession. 

Sliding closer, she sees Tissaia’s breath hitch. They have this effect on one another, the two of them caught in a delicate balance of who they want to be and who they actually are. When Yennefer leans in to try to place their lips together once more, Tissaia backs maddeningly away. At least as far as Yennefer’s hand on the back of her neck will allow.

“I’m not your student anymore. I’m an adult, an equal now,” Yennefer whispers against her ear. 

“Yennefer, I cannot,” Tissaia says in anguish. Her thin fingers skim over Yennefer’s thighs. 

This chagrins Yennefer to no end. They’ve fought, they’ve hidden from one another, they’ve kept the truth from one another’s ears. What’s left but to submit? Yennefer places her hand along Tissaia’s jaw, makes the woman look into the violet of her eyes. Her brows knit together and she is still fighting whatever is happening between them, what has happened before. 

“You kissed me not so long ago,” Yennefer reminds, her tone a warning too. 

“You kissed me first,” Tissaia combats. 

“That may very well be true, but you kissed me back. Why do that if there is nothing between you and I?”

Somewhere between the questions and the push and pull of them, Yennefer has taken to tracing the curves of Tissaia’s body. Her fingers follow the safe paths but long to go off-road. 

“And how might things change once again if I were to enter your bed, Yennefer? While the idea seems well and good, what would come of it?” 

Yennfer laughs but has to clench her legs together too. This unfiltered talk does little to assuage the images on her mind, the two of them a tangle of limbs and lips and flesh. 

“I have no answers, rectoress, only feelings. I scorched a whole army for you. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Can you not see that?” It comes out a breathy thing, laced with more than she’s ever given to anyone. 

“Yennefer…”

“Take a chance on me, Tissaia. On us. I will not disappoint you,” Yennefer all but begs. 

“My darling, I’ve been taking a chance on you almost your entire life,” Tissaia says and her blue eyes are piercing. 

Yennefer grabs her hand and smiles wryly. “So what’s one more then?”

They both share a laugh which diffuses the tension a bit. That is until the silence builds it up again, a wall waiting to be climbed over or broken through. This time, it’s Tissaia who kisses her, their hands still clasped together. Yennefer feels her holding back a little, touching them together with the delicateness of moth wings. 

Yennefer moves her lips with greater purpose, tries a hand along Tissaia’s rib cage and skirting higher. She moves wrong or twists a particular way and feels her own side hitch, body reminding her of the wound still healing. She pulls back with a hiss, grabbing at her abdomen and damning it for the interruption.

“It seems we both have a bit of healing to do before any decisions are made,” Tissaia says softly, her own hands gently covering Yennefer’s which still clutch her abdomen. She stands to leave the medical tent even though she’s sat vigil at Yennefer’s side for days, retching into a pail to rid the toxic metal from her body. 

Now that Yennefer notices, she’s pale and thin and a little worse for wear but still magical, still beautiful even in her state. “Medical tent, Aretuza, anywhere on this continent...it won’t change what I want.” There’s no malice in the words, but the boldness Yennefer has always carried rears its head with a bravado she knows she can’t muster in her condition either. But someday…

“I suspect the right place will find us if it’s meant to be,” Tissaia smiles slightly. “Heal now. It’s what we both need.” She turns around and Yennefer feels something she’s rarely felt in her life-a glow of hope.

************************

They both make it out of the medical tent but not after many days and nights. Tissaia rids her entire system of everything bad but all the good too it seems, and Yennefer takes up the slack during the nights she is deep in fever and delirium. Every time the woman bends to expel more out of her body, contorts and looks completely sapped once the heaving subsides, Yennefer vows even more to snap Fingilla’s neck when she meets her next. 

Eventually, it’s time to leave, the wound on her torso unstitched but still a little blue, and Yennefer goes slower than she’s supposed to, stalls and drags her feet for as long as possible before she must say goodbye, even though it is quite possibly only for a little while. 

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to extend your stay,” Tissaia remarks, hair limp and face a little ashen. She’s on the other side of the poison but she still needs a few days to regain her strength and color. Yennefer longs to see the rose hue of her cheeks again. 

“I don’t want to leave you,” Yennefer says simply, brings a hand to Tissaia’s face. 

“Make sure things are alright, that another battle isn’t imminent. I will join you when I can.”

“Of course another battle is imminent. But I should think Nilfgaard would need to rethink strategy before coming at us again.”

“You can’t burn everything in every battle,” Tissaia goads but it also sounds worried too. 

Yennefer stands then, leans down to kiss Tissaia smoothly before backing away to rest their foreheads together. “You’ve not rid yourself of me, you know.”

“A lesson I’ve learned over and over again,” the woman quirks her lips but then squeezes Yennefer’s hand tightly. “Until we meet again.”

Yennefer can’t stay an instant longer or she will never leave. Stealing a quick kiss once more, she heads out of the tent and creates a portal to Aretuza. 

_Meet me in Rinde,_ she sends out to Tissaia before she steps through. The rectoress will know what she means. 

********************

Yennefer does not bother announcing herself in Aretuza, deciding to forgo decorum and portal right into the great room where Stregobor, Artorius, and the other shit for brains mages stand around the map of the continent. She’d scorch it too because why should a map matter to them at all after the events at Sodden Hill? If she hadn’t wiped it clean of Niflgaardian soldiers, they’d have overrun it too. 

Everywhere they look is a place of cinder and ash. Cintra is gone, other towns now off the map of the Northern Kingdoms because a power-hungry ruler wants the world instead of his own backyard. 

And at one point in time, Yennefer couldn’t fault him for that. She’d stood in front of Tissaia and told her she wanted everything too, and she had. But now the one person who has always managed to call her on her shit and somehow be a pinpoint of something deeper, a pushpin in the good part of Yennefer’s heart, is lying in a medical tent getting over the effects of a metal poisoning that would have killed almost every other mage. She owes Nilfgaard for that. Her destiny is to curl her fingers around Fringilla’s throat as the life ebbs away from her. And that destiny is worth fighting for. 

“The marks that you make, the towns that you gaze on are no more. This is now a relic, a thing to be tossed because you’ve brought disorder to the continent when you refused to act as Tissaia bid you all to do,” Yennefer points out. 

“Oh, you’re one to speak of disorder. The very mage whom the rectoress has repeatedly defended the actions of,” Stregobor scoffs. “Every time you raised the hackles of people across this very map, it was all we could do to get her to stay in her place here at Aretuza. She’d want to traipse off to wherever you might be in a grand effort to reign you back in.”

“And perhaps that’s the problem!” Yennefer yells. “You’ve tried to keep a hand on the back of Tissaia’s skirts to control her instead of listening to what she has to say. You’re so concerned that she might eclipse the lot of you and have no use for you anymore. This is on you now. Now, more than ever, it’s clear that her guidance is needed to lead the Brotherhood.”

Artorius remains quiet but casts a look to Stregobor who launches into another tirade. 

“You think this is on _us_ ? Why, your previous peer stood right here at this table and expounded on how _you_ were originally supposed to be in her post. Can we not assign some of the blame to you?”

“You complain about how I’ve turned out and about the ‘disorder’ that I cause. You really think it better that I were to be in Nilfgaard than Fringilla? This is beating a dead horse with a stick anyway. How many other lives could we be leading were we to choose different paths? The issue here is that we have a very real threat now, one which we went to Sodden to try and stop.”

The room stays silent and Yennefer wants to slap each and every face she still sees deferring to pompous Stregobor. Finally, Artorius clears his throat and casts concerned eyes toward Yennefer. 

“Our numbers are depleted and with Nilfgaard losing the battle, one could assume they’re hurting but vengeful. Where they lost thousands of soldiers, another two thousand will surely be waiting in the flanks to take their place. This leaves us in a delicate position going forward.”

No one speaks. Yennefer’s sorrow and anger are still fresh, her thoughts thinking of Tissaia lying in a bed far from the place she dedicated her life to. So much hangs in the balance. So much could go wrong. Knowing who is running the show in Nilfgaard, Yennefer has no doubt the future is chock with more death, more destruction. 

She closes her eyes, sees a face in her mind, curls her fingers into fists. They start to glow, a faint orange at first and then growing in brightness. She opens her eyes again, violet storms raging behind them. Every mage who voted to leave them alone stares at her with mouths agape. 

“Alright, listen up. This is how it’s going to be,” Yennefer announces. She’s just getting started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notice how the "chapter" count went up? Yeah, there is a bonus "scene" brewing. The rating for that scene will not be teen.


	4. The Meeting in Rinde

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I have fiddled with this chapter for a few days and I don't know that I have successfully hit the mark on what I was wanting to accomplish. Some part of me battled with thinking this sounds OOC for the context of what we've been given of their personalities, but then I decided there is so little known about Tissaia at this point, so everything is mostly left to speculation. That being said, I hope this is angsty, fluffy, sexy and everything in between (which is what I was really going for in the first place)
> 
> **Note the rating change. It is ONLY for this chapter, so if you like to stay in the world of 'T' rated reading, perhaps skip this one. The story still makes sense without reading this.
> 
> ***Slight trigger warning in regard to something Yennefer did in the show and it’s referenced here

She’s in front of the same mirror, applying the same shade of lipstick as the last time she was here. Only now, it’s for vastly different reasons. True, the nature of enhancing her appearance is still for entertaining but this time she plans to take a more active role. Which amps up a lot of confusing things coursing through her body. 

It’s a while before she appears, the portal whirring to life behind Yennefer. When she walks through and the portal closes behind her, Yennefer stands and tries to muster the swagger of the mage she’s become only to find herself more like the stricken hunchback out of place. 

“You look well,” Tissaia says, a pleasantry. 

“You do too,” Yennefer nods, still far away. Farther than she would like to be. “I worried about you once I left. My time in Aretuza wasn’t the most welcoming either.”

“No, I suppose not,” Tissaia agrees. Yennefer nods tightly, previously too caught up in herself to notice the person before her.

She looks more herself, the color returned to her cheeks and her blue eyes sparkle. Yennefer’s mouth goes dry when she looks her up and down. Her dress is cut impeccably, thinner than most frocks in the standard fashion. It tapers incredibly low, the scoops of her bosom curving out from the fabric. It’s a dark blue, like midnight, and works perfectly with her dark hair which is in a less severe updo than normal. Like a pair of fingers could touch it and it would relent. 

Yennefer swallows hard and turns back to her makeup to gather some composure, to calm her racing heart. “Nilfgaard is up to something, no doubt, but we have time yet to devise a better plan than me creating a storm of flame and ember.” She fiddles with a perfume bottle, hands trembling. 

“Did you invite me here to discuss politics?” Tissaia frowns a bit and ambles forward a little, her shoes sounding on the wooden planks. 

“No,” Yennefer admits, sets the bottle down a little roughly and turns around. “I’m just…” she starts and then sighs heavily. “I’m really fucking nervous.”

There. She’s said it. The fearless Yennefer of Vengerberg skittish like a barn cat in front of a person she’s been full of piss and vinegar toward since almost the beginning. Tissaia moves to stand closer and her eyes show guilt. 

“I would never make you do anything you didn’t want…” she begins but Yennefer reaches out and places her palm over the woman’s lips to stop the sentence from reaching its conclusion. 

“No,” Yennefer whispers. “Never that. I’ve wanted you, I think, since the moment you unwrapped my wrists at Aretuza and told me I was losing control.”

She pulls back her hand slowly but sucks in a breath when Tissaia closes her eyes and leans forward to capture the side of it with her lips. She lays several peppered presses of her mouth to the skin, punctuation, ellipses, for what’s yet to come. Yennefer finds the other, more lonely hand seeking solace on the jut of Tissaia’s hip. 

“Then let’s have tonight before the world turns on its end again,” Tissaia murmurs against her flesh. She tilts her eyesight up to Yennefer whose own gaze is the darkest purple Tissaia’s ever seen. 

Tissaia drops her palm, steps closer so that they’re pushed against each other in the most delicious of spots. Yennefer’s head lolls back, throat pushed out and breathy sighs escaping. The sensation of being kissed on her exposed throat and not looking is more erotic than she expects, usually an act almost trivial due to its statistical inevitability in matters of the flesh. Tissaia changes that all.

It’s stupid to think it feels like _the_ first time but in a sense, it is. It’s their first time together, the initial learning of one another’s bodies, a thing to never be completely new again. Yennefer usually never spends a lot of time planning or dwelling, but as Tissaia’s lips glide along her throat, dipping to her collarbones, threatening lower, she wants nothing more than to get what’s transpiring between them right. 

Her heart feels incredibly full, packed to an almost painful point, as she finally lets herself reach the pins in Tissaia’s hair. They are delicate things and are gripped tightly in Yennefer’s hands moments later as she watches mesmerized as the hair cascades down in soft waves. 

She touches the locks reverently, pulling back with chest heaving. They’ve done very little but already Yennefer is close to being gone, the impending fruition of an act she’s been dreaming of since she was a mere youngling pushing hard in many places. To want this in such a visceral way for years on end and never expect to be sated. It’s another pain Yennefer has grown around, inside of, into.

The glow of the room and Yennefer’s body cast shadows along Tissaia’s form, would too on skin if it were showing. Yennefer decides to remedy this by dipping her fingers below the fabric at Tissaia’s shoulder and pushing it aside. The swell of her is revealed, it’s pebbled peak a thing her mouth wants to climb. The hand mimics the motion on the other side and then the dress pools at her feet leaving her bare to Yennefer’s world. 

She steps demurely out, slides it gracefully with a toe beyond the border of the bed. Slides herself back until she’s bent a knee up with the other leg resting on the sheets. Yennefer can’t see between them but the rising slopes of her breasts look divine in the faint light. Her eyebrow quirks slightly when Yennefer doesn’t follow, instead standing at the foot of her and the bed, taking all of her in.

It’s possibly a tease to keep her waiting, but Yennefer feels acutely, the sense of waiting for this woman her entire life. There have been others, a handful or so. Their candle flames die, staved off from air, compared to the one that burns for Tissaia. 

Yennefer doesn’t believe in anything much, nothing bigger or higher. She’s always placed her faith in disorder, in want versus need, in guarding herself so that no one else can find her completely. What she does speak is true, but she’s never given it all up. When she watches Tissaia’s hand circle around herself, fingers grazing the peak, Yennefer wants to deliver the world to her. 

Bunching her dress around her hips, she settles her legs on either side of Tissaia’s body, lets the flesh of their thighs meet and a hiss escape her lips. Blue eyes bore into her, watch her ferally, and the look makes Yennefer pull her dress up past the final parts of her body to join Tissaia’s on the floor. 

She hovers then, mouth ghosting over Tissaia’s belly and dark hair flowing over the woman’s side like dark water. She arches her back like a cat, pulls herself forward and creates a phantom line to the hills and valley of her, looks up with her wild eyes and even wilder heart. 

Tissaia is a vision and Yennefer feels a sudden pang of jealousy, of possession, thinking of who else has gotten to see her in this regard. She wants to scold Tissaia for creating the wild thing she’s become, for who she’s molded her to be. 

“Are you ever going to touch me?” Tissaia whispers almost like a plea. 

Yennefer’s lips quirk, so amused with the woman asking for something so intimate when she’s danced around Yennefer for years, rebelled against even the slightest hint of affection. It’s a greedy feeling, warm as it spreads. Yennefer reaches down, then takes to learning the contours of her body. 

The whole time, Tissaia’s eyes never leave Yennefer’s and Yennefer feels the shock and wonder of it between her own legs. Her hand takes and scoops across the skin, cups the ample breast to test its weight, to remember it for all eternity. She watches Tissaia when she does this, whose lips part and eyes finally find the ceiling with a tender swipe across the expanse of it. 

“Put your mouth there,” is let out in a dying gasp and Yennefer’s own breath leaves her body in a rush. Tissaia winces slightly, closes her eyes, and tries again. “Please.”

Oh, this is dangerous. That word, that bloody _word_ , has an unspeakable power because it’s been used so little. She must know its ability, the way Yennefer would almost drop to her knees in deference to her if she used it anymore. Yennefer decides if her reward is the word then Tissaia’s can come from the action it evokes. She acquiesces with the heat of her lips. 

It’s all incredibly quiet, like Tissaia’s still holding in everything to avoid letting it go despite the fact that Yennefer is against every bit of her skin, that she’s tasted what her flesh is like, touched it all the same. This stills her movements but not her thoughts, pulling up to look in Tissaia’s eyes. 

“Where are you?” Yennefer whispers, runs her nose along Tissaia’s cheek. 

“I’m here,” Tissaia tries but Yennefer throws her a look of knowing better. Of understanding more. 

“What are you afraid of?” It’s both a tough and fine question to ask. 

“I’ve been afraid since the moment I portaled into this room,” Tissaia admits. “I don’t want to do this wrong either.”

“Why didn’t you say something earlier?” 

“I couldn’t.” 

And Yennefer knows why. It’s not in Tissaia’s character to reveal herself in more than one way at a time. This is more than physicality, more than cursory emotion or half-truths. It’s asking her to speak, to be seen, when she’s spent a lifetime watching her words and those who have been observing her. Yennefer suspects they’ve all walked away with pieces. No one has ever had the whole. 

“Talk to me now then,” Yennefer prompts. “Every time I do something, tell me how it feels. Tell me if there’s something you want me to do, like earlier when I touched you here.” She slowly and delicately brings her pointer and middle fingers together to wisp across her breast. She watches as Tissaia sucks in a breath, closes her eyes. “I’ll do the same.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Yennefer repeats after her and tries to calm the rattle in her own rib cavity. 

She moves the hair from Tissaia’s shoulder and brushes it up onto the pillow. Her lips find Tissaia’s neck and trace the passage of it. “This is the only part of you that I got to see for years. How I grew to love it.” _It_ , Yennefer has to tell herself again. Yearns to say another word in its place. Decides it’s too soon. 

Tissaia picks up the arm Yennefer isn’t using to hold herself up, traces her fingers along it until they’re ghosting across the scar she finds at her wrist. Yennefer sucks in breath and pulls away from Tissaia’s neck when she feels the woman’s soft lips there. 

“You’ll never understand the cold fear I felt when I walked into that room and saw what you’d done,” Tissaia utters against her. “How I did everything in my power to save you. I’d just met you and I already couldn’t let you go.” 

There are tears in her eyes and Yennefer’s heart lurches. Isn’t this supposed to be a happy fuck? Why are they both ripping their bodies open to lay everything on the line?

 _Because we have to_ , echoes in Yennefer’s mind and of course they do. If this is the direction they’re going, then Yennefer supposes there’s a lot more to add to the place where that came from within Tissaia. 

“Back then, every time I fucked up, I was embarrassed and angry, yes, but I was also secretly thrilled too. It meant that you’d look at me, pay attention to me. No one else,” Yennefer spills out and Tissaia gasps. Does so again when Yennefer reaches between them and finds her slick to the touch. 

This is so beyond being incredibly messed up, the fact that they’re getting worked up and turned on by their past traumas, their past pain. The history of their lives intertwined could break even the most ironclad of hearts, yet here they lay entangled in one another and pouring forth more. 

“I wanted to be the one with you when you were undergoing your transformation. I had wanted to hold you and tell you it would be alright. I wanted to make sure you knew that I believed in you and would never abandon you in any way,” Tissaia chokes out while holding her face and Yennefer works below on her. 

“The last time we were here in this very room, when I told you I wanted everything? That meant you too,” Yennefer speaks into her chest, pace pushing the boundary of touch without intent. There’s an end in Yennefer’s mind, one she both wants to arrive at to see what she knows must be a beautiful look bloom across Tissaia’s face and stretch this out into forever. 

“I went home that night and touched myself to the thought of you, ached everywhere for you all at once,” Tissaia whispers and Yennefer cries out a strangled moan. 

This is like stepping into a dream or waking up and finding the thing that’s been playing on your eyelids for an eternity is right in front of you and too good to be true. She stops what she’s doing which elicits the first _loud_ sound from Tissaia since this whole thing began. She takes the woman’s hand in her own, brings it to her hips and makes it bunch up the flesh there in a hard pinch to test the boundaries of reality. 

“What are you doing?” Tissaia frowns but pants too.

“Making sure I’m real. That I’m alive,” Yennefer explains quickly. Tissaia barks out a laugh and then moves her other hand between Yennefer’s legs. 

“You are very much real. Very much alive,” she says against the shell of Yennefer’s ear. 

Yennefer’s got her own ascent to worry about now as Tissaia tries to work her into oblivion. Her eyes go wide and her mouth hangs open. It’s the best and the most and _too damn much_ all at once. Something has to shift her brain away from the coil in her belly and to make this not end pitifully quick. The unspoken outline they’ve set for the night is the only way to keep Yennefer from falling completely off the edge. 

“When I came to Aretuza and saw you again for the first time in decades, I was mad at myself for leaving you that night. I was furious that I seemed to be the only one to see how amazing you are and have always been. You were wasted in the Brotherhood and I wanted nothing more than to grab you away and take us somewhere else.”

“Tell me what you would have done,” Tissaia challenges. “In that room with all of those mages watching everything.”

“I’d have shoved them all away, grabbed you by the hips and whisked us to some place quiet and dark and only for the two of us.”

“What next?” Tissaia urges on and _fuck_ , this isn’t really doing much to stop the end Yennefer has been trying to stave off at all, is it?

“I’d have pulled up that incredibly stiff maroon dress you had on and touched you like I had wanted to do all along. I’d have you saying my name like you’re going to tonight.”

“My, my, aren’t we a bit full of ourselves,” Tissaia says with a click of her tongue. 

“No, full of you,” Yennefer grins and buries herself to the hilt. This time, Tissaia does scream out and Yennefer herself just needs a little bit more before she’s flying through the air. “I wanted you like this the night before we fought at Sodden, but you wouldn’t let me. Why wouldn’t you let me?”

“I’ve spent many years denying you,” Tissaia says as Yennefer works at her. “I didn’t know how to have you.” Her nails dig into Yennefer’s back, scratching lines. She moves them to Yennefer’s stomach, again sketches the puckered line of healing on her body. A hand leaves and travels to her own mouth. Tissaia kisses the pad of her thumb and brings it down again to press on the mark. “Never leave me again.”

Her stone blue eyes look into Yennefer’s, stay fixed even as she moves up and down with the rhythm of Yennefer’s hand. 

“Never,” Yennefer agrees even in its improbability. With that, Tissaia is gone. 

The sight it is to behold— The way her nose wrinkles and her eyes snap shut, the sounds her mouth makes as it hangs open and her chest heaves as she falls into it. It’s worth every single year stacked up to this very moment, worth the suffering and self-doubt, the way she’s always lost everything. It doesn’t matter as long as it tallies to this. 

When she’s on the come down, she languidly rises and maneuvers Yennefer underneath her. Her pace is slow, meandering. Perilous. 

“You have no clue, do you? How long I’ve kept you buried in my heart,” Tissaia asks, finds the lustering buildup of their words. 

Yennefer feels Tissaia’s hand still as she closes her eyes, lost somewhere in the moment. She too tries not to get adrift in the way of her words. A decisive instant crosses into Tissaia who comes to her knees and sets to her purpose again. Yennefer grips the fabric of the sheets. 

She’s devoid of speech now, tucked tight inside herself. Tissaia sees this, knows this instantly, and meets her in her mind. A battlement of things are exchanged then—

_I never knew it’d feel this way to touch you_

_Please forgive me for losing control_

_I barely know who I am with you, but I don’t want to be who I’ve been anymore anyway_

Yennefer, to her credit, manages to push back against Tissaia’s thoughts despite the rapture of her body, the pure delight inside her own skin—

_You are my beginning and end_

_What did I do to deserve you, to deserve this_

_Don’t apologize for listening to your heart_

“And what does yours say, my dear?” Tissaia murmurs quietly, an expert with her hands just like she is at everything. 

Yennefer wails the answer, flings it against the walls and the world for everything to hear. When the fuzzy pitch fades from her eyes, she tries a glance up into Tissaia’s eyes, afraid of what to find there as she had let herself go. 

There’s a softness there, the lines between her brow a different kind of rising. Yennefer reaches up to smooth the wrinkles from Tissaia’s head. A hearty laugh fills the room as her head falls to Yennefer’s chest. She speaks back what Yennefer has already given. 

It’s a fix to the way Rinde was supposed to go. It’s a pleasant type of life to be living. 

Yennefer hopes the repetition of it is something that lines her future in the greatest of numbers. 


End file.
